I can go either way, but I want the Friend to be interesting, to add something to the saga. I don't think it would be horrible, if we go the other route, to have Zethos in the background, as a possible hook.
Scott
I've updated the vis sources through Summer 1228. The pollen in the lake regio did indeed turn out to collect in Summer, which gave us 9 pawns of vis over the last two seasons: 1 each of Rego, Animal, Imaginem, and Terram, and 5 Vim.
Viola and Gregorius each 2 pawns at this point, and Viola is happy to let Gregorius choose first. Plus, we'll have a notional half a pawn left of salary left over (that is, we get another pawn of salary each after 3 more pawns of covenant income).
Scott
If we're treating Tasia as a member still, shouldn't we reserve vis for her? That would mean 1 pawn each, plus 1 1/2 left over.
I'd also assume we'd only divvy out the vis once a year?
I note for future reference that if we're casting an eigth magnitude aegis every year, the covenant is going to have a net surplus after the aegis of 1/2 a pawn a year (and we'll need to either start eating into the vim vis stocks and/or use Rego vis in the casting as well and/or distill from the aura/trade). That doesn't feel long-term viable, so we might want to assign more to the covenant stores.
Gregorius still ideally wants the Rego for the binding, unless he's got anywhere with his attempts to set up a mentem vis trade with any of the other forms?
We can do it once a year, sure. I don't remember when we did it last, though. As for Tasia, yeah, that's a difficult issue. It might be a good reason to have her formally resign her membership in the near future (it's not like she's doing any covenant service)--or maybe just suspend it somehow.
As for the vis income, you make a good point, but can't we have someone extract vis once in a while to generate Vim for the Aegis? Mind you, under the ArM5 rules, vis extraction isn't that profitable.
Scott
None of the magi have impressive CrVi lab totals for harvesting, and Gregorius might have flaws which make vis harvesting even worse (?). 1 season will maybe ~4x vim pawns for Gregorius, ~5 for Fray, and ~8 for Viola. The higher lab total should harvest.
Remember that in ArM5, the lab total is divided by 10.
Scott
I tend to assume Creative Block applies where Inventive Genius would, so I wouldn't apply it to vis extraction, and I also don't think Unimaginative Learner or Waster of Vis would apply to creating it, only using it.
That said, I think Gregorius can only manage 2 pawns in any case (Int 1 + Cr 0 + Vi 5 + MT 4 + Aura 5 + Lab GQ 2 + Lab Cr 1 + Lab Vis Extraction +2-1 = 19), so it's really not a good use of his time. He could push to 3 pawns fairly easily, which still isn't great but isn't completely useless, but doing so is unlikely to be high up his priority list as things stand.
For the advancement of time Fray will start using books to raise arts, just want to check if your magi are also trying to use them - my seasons are flexible. Wants to use the Corpus and Auram books and learn a spell from the library.
Gregorius isn't currently planning to use the Corpus or Auram. It's possible things might change on the Corpus, but very unlikely for the Auram. His primary interests are going to be the Rego and Mentem summae, along with Leadership.
MTKnife - I still need to know what's available to him for learning Leadership.
I think a book on the subject is out of the question at the moment, unless he's wiling to pay for it (he's already pushing it with the casting tablet and such), and, at the level he's already achieved (3), any book is likely to be a Tractatus. (While I understand that the Tremere in particular have a great deal of interest in this skill, it's also not one that anyone thought about writing about or teaching systematically in the Middle Ages.)
Finding a teacher might be easier, but it's going to be a bit challenging and/or expensive to find one with a high enough skill level.
Scott
In the Summer of1228 Fray would like to buy copy of the Roots of the Order, forum disussion. What would be the cost?
Say ballpark x1-2 vis? cost discussion
Huh? Gregorius has no score in Leadership currently, which is why he's keen to get one now that he's the covenant leader.
He's happy to pay silver for a leadership book, but not vis - it's a mundane subject, so should be paid for with mundane resources. There are people at the covenant with Leadership, but he doesn't want to get someone he's meant to be leading to teach him how to lead them.
I thought he had a 3. Must have looked at the wrong character sheet, or misread.
I'm unsure what general rule of thumb to apply to books on mundane topics--they're not magic, but they're extremely valuable in game terms, and they're quite expensive. How often would it be reasonable to obtain one, and what guidelines might we use to determine type, level, and quality?
Scott
A leadership summae is probably going to have a strong military or political subject matter and be as much a historical text. Leadership is a topic that I think would have been very popular for centuries. I’d say getting a very high summae score will be expensive but a high quality would be cheap as there is so much material available. Overall it’s a cheap text, although not as cheap as a version of the bible.
Cov.p95 indicates that almost any mundane book is a pound and available in a large city, delivery in a season.
So 3/12 should be pretty cheap, a 5 getting pricey?
A relatively low level, high quality is what Gregorius is aiming for at this point - ideally he wants to be at level 2 after a season's study (or at least very close to it), and then go off and do something else with his time for a while. We're pretty close to Constantinople, so we have "large city" covered.
Viola doesn't object to one book. In the medium term, however, we need to get our income sources going--we've only got enough silver left for this year and half of next.
Scott
The income notes say covenant needs to do something about getting the toys to market and also get the quarry producing.
Could Theodoric and Phocas be asked to start setting potential distribution points for the quarry? No idea who t do this except to unleash the grogs using their bargain and business savvy.
Bumping the question on the vis cost of the Roots or tractus of roots.
Was also.discussed at the start of the saga.
I think we'd already agreed previously that we were going to have to take the quarry off building up the covenant and turn it to income generation now. Do we need to do anything other than make the declaration?
Getting the toys to market was meant to be an adventure, but ran into the problem that there was no-one to run it.
I think that should be enough--it won't be difficult to find buyers.
We need someone else to SG....
Scott